


should i tear my eyes out now (before i see too much)

by kagaymitaigay



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Whump, gotta hurt the baby angel, if you don't want to read that you should not read this, it's somewhere in between h/c and h no c, this is a fic about aziraphale getting his wings cut off
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-15 01:13:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19285072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kagaymitaigay/pseuds/kagaymitaigay
Summary: “But we’re meant to be the good guys,” Aziraphale says. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”“What we mean is to make an example out of a traitor.”





	should i tear my eyes out now (before i see too much)

**Author's Note:**

> In case I did not trigger warn you enough. This is extreme hurt with very little comfort. There may be more comfort later on. Mostly there is pain. Heaven is characterized as emotionally and physically abusive. If you don't want fuckiness, don't continue. If you still choose to go on, welcome to the garbage pail, population me.

Gabriel stares at him like he’s one of the butterflies on the cork-board in his shop, like he’s been stabbed clean through with the gaze as sharp as an entomologist’s pin. 

“So,” Gabriel says. “With one act of treason you averted the war.” 

He stutters. “Well, I think the greater good--” 

“Don’t talk to me about the greater good, sunshine. I’m the Archangel Fucking Gabriel.” 

He didn’t think archangels were allowed to swear. 

“The greater good was, we were finally going to settle things with the opposition once and for all!” 

Uriel unties his wrists, and with a voice as sharp as Gabriel’s eyes, says “Up.” 

“But we’re meant to be the good guys,” Aziraphale says. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you?” 

“What we mean is to make an example out of a traitor.” Gabriel gestures to the thing in the corner. Aziraphale hadn’t noticed it till now, until Gabriel gestures to it. “Stand here.” 

He has no choice but to obey, standing over what he now recognizes as a St. Andrew’s cross. 

“Tie him.” 

Uriel lashes his wrists to the top of the cross, his chin snugged uncomfortably into the top of the X formed by the boards. And isn’t it poetic, somehow, that his punishment would come on a cross. 

“Wings out,” Uruel says. They run their fingers down either side of his spine until they reach them, gripping cruelly at the place where they join to his skin. He feels a woosh of air as they’re made forcibly corporeal. 

“What...what are you doing?” he asks. 

“Shut your stupid mouth,” Gabriel says. “If you want to side with the humans so bad, it’s only fair that you become one of them.”    
It’s madness. There’s no way he can truly take away his grace, that he can actually become human. But....oh. Oh no. 

“Please, there must be another solution. I’ll...I’ll change. I’ll be better! I was just trying to be good!” Aziraphale twists against his bindings, but the knots hold tight. His wings flutter uselessly behind him as he hears the  _ shing _ of a sword being unsheathed, and feels the whitehot flame of it against his skin. 

His own sword. 

“This won’t hurt a bit,” Gabriel says. 

Sandalphon snickers. “He’s wrong. This is going to hurt a lot.” 

Angels don’t pass out from pain. God, in Her infinite wisdom or lack thereof, never built an off switch into them. So he feels every moment, every shard of pain, as his sword slices through his wings. Logically he knows it should have taken only a moment. He knows that sword, knows how long it takes to make a swing. This feels like it takes eons, like every moment since the world began is contained in the time it takes to separate wings from body. 

He smells sizzling skin and burnt feathers as the sword instantly cauterizes the wound, and feels his back lighten as after one fluid motion, his wings slide to the ground with a sickening thud. 

He retches, throws up nothing but bile into his mouth. It’s too much, too much, but he can’t have the sweet oblivion of unconsciousness. Can’t have anything but the sudden lightness of his shoulder blades, and the gutwrenching realization that he will never fly again. There’s blood in his mouth from biting his tongue till he broke skin. 

“So. Did you learn your lesson?” Gabriel asks, still chipper as ever. And Aziraphale nods, because what else can he do. He wonders what they’ll do with his wings, if they’ll pin them up somewhere in heaven like a dead insect’s. Or if they’ll just burn them away. 

“I’m sorry,” he gasps, voice thick from tears and his swelling tongue. 

“I know,” Gabriel says. He rubs his arm with something that almost passes for affection. “Buck up, champ. You can take the hit. It’ll remind you of what you’re meant for.” 

He nods. It’s all he can do. 

Uriel touches his bonds and they fall free, and he stumbles as he steps away from the cross, eyes shut tightly so he can’t see his wings. Gabriel catches him. And he hates himself for leaning into the touch, after such cruelty inflicted upon him. In instinct he tries to protect himself with his wings, tries to flare them tries to hit him tries to….He feels the place where they should be as only so much empty air. 

“It’ll remind you,” Gabriel says, as Aziraphale sobs in his arms. “No fraternizing.” 

“No fraternizing.” 

 

#####

 

The first thing he does is fraternize. 

He doesn’t know where he can go, can’t settle into any of the familiar chairs of his bookshop without the weight of his wings behind him as an anchor, with his back whitehot scar tissue, a kaleidoscope of pain. So, like he always does when he doesn’t know where to go, he goes to Crowley. 

“Angel. What’s wrong?” Crowley says as he opens the door to his flat, sees a tearstained face with swollen eyes and a trickle of blood running down his chin.  

“Look at me,” Aziraphale says. 

“You look like shit,” Crowley says, “not to put too fine a point on it.” 

Aziraphale sobs. “No. Look at me, really look.”    
He can see Crowley’s wings, if he looks with his angelic sight. Proud and black, furled behind him in all their glory. And if Crowley looks at him with his true sight....

“Angel. No.” 

He’s already in his arms. 

“Your wings. Love, where are your wings?” 

Crowley is so soft. He didn’t know he could be this soft. 

“They took my wings, Crowley,” he says, still struggling to speak. He buries his face in his chest and sobs. 

Crowley’s arms tighten around him, his wings curling around him in a protective embrace. “I’ll kill them all,” he says. “For thinking they could so much as lay a hand on you, I’ll kill them all.” 

“I know, darling,” Aziraphale says. “But please. First. Can I just go to sleep?”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [In the Absence of Starsong](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19351807) by [gumbiecat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gumbiecat/pseuds/gumbiecat)




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